GENDER ROLES

What Impact On The Family Have Changes In Gender Roles Had?

Abstract

Gender roles have changed since the 1950s in the United States, it has become more acceptable for women to use different names in various situations because of their roles in society. Over the previous decade, certain societal trends have enabled women to keep their surnames. Today's pattern of college-educated women is to take the name of their husband. Most women are using their last names in different situations.

Table of Content

Abstract2

Introduction4

Review4

Conclusion11

Annotated Bibliography25

APPENDIX36

Introduction

As gender roles have changed since the 1950s in the United States, it has become more acceptable for women to use different names in various situations because of their roles in society. Over the previous decade, certain societal trends have enabled women to keep their surnames. Today's pattern of college-educated women is to take the name of their husband. Most women are using their last names in different situations. Women today are delaying marriage, longer increasing education attainment, and being represented in the workplace with greater numbers (Goldin and Shim 2004). In previous decades, these actions are what lead women to keep their surname, but today are allowing the women to take their husband's name. Today's societal tendency is for women to use different last names in different situations.

Review

The trend in today's society among college-educated women is to take the name of their husband. Research shows that in the early 1990s, the trend was for women to keep their surname. The New York Times marriage announcements, Massachusetts birth records, and Harvard Alumni records highlight the percentage of women who took their surnames. According to Goldin and Shim (2004), there has been a sharp increase in the number/percentage of women retaining their surnames from the early 1970s to the mid 1980s. The increase leveled off in the late 1990s. Goldin and Shim (2004) use society's influence to explain the increase in surname usage. The largest sign of the correlation that women will keep their surname is her age at marriage. The average age of a woman, who was born in 1950 and graduated college, was twenty-three years old when married compared to women who were born in 1957 and married at age twenty-five (Goldin and Shim 2004). This trend has been balanced until today. The average age of a women to get married is now around twenty seven years old (Goldin and Shim 2004).

Another aspect to women keeping their surname is educational achievement. The number of women who attend college or graduate schools increased with the tendency of a woman to keep her own name (Goldin and Shim 2004). In the 1970s, women began to “make a name” for themselves professionally and among friends before they married (Goldin and Shim 2004). This helps explain why some women elected to keep their surnames and to protect the value of their contracts, publications, and professional goodwill (Goldin and Shim 2004).

“In the 1990s, evidence from the Massachusetts birth record shows that 23 percent of college-educated women kept their own name ...